Markus Steinbach: Spatial features — The Syntax and Semantics of R-loci in German Sign Language

description

Linguistic research on typologically different sign languages (SLs) over the past fifty years has demonstrated vividly that SL grammars incorporate grammatical systems of pronominal reference, quantification, agreement, subordination, mood, aspect, and rules of sign order that are comparable to that found in spoken languages, including their historical development, acquisition, processing and variation. Taking this general conclusion to be well-established, a prominent trend of research focuses on those aspects of SL grammar that nevertheless appear to make SLs different from spoken languages. Such apparently SL-specific grammatical properties pose potentially fruitful challenges to the study of Universal Grammar (UG), and they offer illuminating perspectives on the ways sign languages are shaped by the gestural-visual nature of their modality (including the use of space, non-manuals, simultaneity, the interaction with gesture, etc).

This workshop provides a forum for the discussion of theoretical, and theoretically oriented typological and psycholinguistic aspects of SL syntax whose analysis contributes to a better understanding of UG, as well as the ways in which UG interacts with the properties of the gestural-visual modality to yield apparently SL-specific linguistic structures and phenomena.

Possible topics include, but are not limited to, the grammatical systems of:

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